Tim Moen

This fathers day my kids took me to see the latest Superman movie and I was struck by the similarities between the Superman narrative and the Christian narrative. Here are the things I noticed: 1)       Heaven – Krypton is a designed and created Utopian paradise where Kryptonians seem to live forever. 2)       The Fall of Lucifer – General Zod was Kryptons top general and disagrees with the ultimate authority and battles for control and is ultimately cast out to another dimension, just like Lucifer and his minions. 3)       A Unique Birth – Jesus was born to a virgin (assuming Mary and Joe didn’t lie) and Superman was the first Kryptonian born through a vagina in Millenia, all others were birthed in a genesis chamber. 4)       Sent to Another World to Be its Savior – Jor’el pontificates that Superman could guide and lead the people of Earth to a better future and prevent ...

Carl Sagan popularized the phrase, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Skeptics of pseudoscience, paranormal activity, deities, snake-oil salesmen, psychics, Loch Ness Monster, and leprechauns often use it to explain to people that the onus is on the person making a claim so extraordinary that it exceeds everything we know of the natural world and the universe. So a person claiming, “I have a dog” requires far less evidence than a person claiming “I have a dragon.” In the former claim we all know people who own dogs, we know that dogs exist empirically and so when Bob shows us a picture of a dog we can justifiably believe him. The latter claim requires more evidence because there has never been evidence for dragons existing and it is incredibly likely that a fire breathing monster would have been seen and reported at some point in the past century if it exists, so when Bob shows us a picture of his dragon we cannot justifiably believe he's telling the truth kno...